


Underexposure

by igrab



Series: Relativity [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2636042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrab/pseuds/igrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of snapshots set in the Relativity universe. some are just small scene/episode tags, not enough to make a full story out of, some are pieces from other points of view, other characters, etc etc lesbians</p>
            </blockquote>





	Underexposure

If the Lt. Colonel and Dr. McKay thought they were being subtle, well. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of Atlantis were neither blind nor deaf, and were therefore _totally_ aware that their military commander and lead science officer were in lesbians with each other.

Dana was actually excited about this, but then, Dana got excited about a lot of things. Some people found it annoying, which generally led to Eve booting them off her team. She was pretty sure she was biased. (AR-1 got all the exciting missions anyway; AR-2 was exploration and data gathering, their target planets mostly uninhabited. Dana was a brilliant goddamn botanist and they worked well together. Obviously, she wasn't going to fuck with that, just because some people - _idiots_ \- didn't like her enthusiasm.)

"It's so _cute_ , though," Dana enthused, bending over her bonzai projects and totally unaware of how her shirt was riding up and leaving her ass on display.

"Uh huh," Eve murmured, taking full advantage of the free show and, maybe, not paying entirely as much attention as she should have been, but. Butt! Dana had such a cute butt, it would just be a crime not to observe.

"I mean, you've got the Maj- Lieutenant Colonel," and she looked up quickly like she was actually worried Eve would mind.

Eve was just grinning, fond and happy. The promotion was still new enough to be exciting, after all. "Uh huh."

"And she's all, well, you know."

"Hot?" Eve quipped, and Dana rolled her eyes like Eve was _terrible_ but also, probably, right.

"I was going to say 'laid back'," she muttered.

"No, you weren't." Eve smirked, and Dana threw a woodchip at her.

"So the ell-cee is hot, and the Doctor...?"

Still blushing, Dana poked at the tiny branches of her tiny bonzai'd version of one of the trees from the mainland. "Is also perfectly attractive, that's not the point. She's just, um. Not to speak ill of my superiors..."

"Which you _never_ do," Eve drawled with a happy fondness. Dana threw another woodchip.

" _Not to speak ill of my superiors_ , but I think we can all agree that Dr. McKay is... well. Difficult to get along with."

"Abrasive," Eve corrected, then started ticking off more adjectives on her fingers. "Callous. Obstinate. Short-tempered. Just plain short..."

"Oh my god, please don't get me fired, E, _stop_ ," but she abandoned her tree and came over instead, pushing herself into Eve's arms to block her hands, which was, after all, what Eve had really wanted.

"Mmm. So opposites attract?"

"I guess," Dana murmured, tucking her narrow face into the crook of Eve's neck, one of the few soft places on a body too well-trained to be good for cuddling. Whatever, Dana was all bones and skin and they made it work, the way they made everything work. Not in big ways, like Sheppard and McKay, but. Little things. Like how Evelyn Lorne's quarters had turned into a greenhouse for a while but they'd settled on bonzais only, at home. How Eve used to eat with the boys and now she had breakfast with them, but not dinner, because dinner was for Dana and Kaleb and her other botanist friends. How Dana stopped reserving lab time in the choice block after dawn, because that used to be when Eve would spar with Ford. They haven't quite worked out what they want to do with that time, but it helped, having Dana there. It helped knowing that she understood that Eve didn't want to be alone.

"Evie?" Dana asked, kissing just up under her girlfriend's ear. "What if Sheppard and McKay get married?"

Eve sputtered a bit. "Well, that's a bit premature," but she had a feeling she knew where this was going.

"I know, I know, but what _if_." She bit her lip, tracing circles on Eve's chest, just above the worn-out neck of her sports bra. 

Eve stared up at the ceiling and told herself, not for the first time, _You're a Major in the United States Air Force. That's still a thing. Just because you're in another galaxy, doesn't mean the laws stop working, just because you're in another galaxy and your commanding officer doesn't care, doesn't mean..._

"If that," and she didn't clarify, but they both knew that it wasn't really Joanna and Ronnie they were talking about, "happens. I mean, if it's." She drew in a breath, blew it out slow.

Dana seemed to be simply amused, now that Eve had gotten her drift, and she laid her head sideways on Eve's boobs and the look in her blue, blue eyes was nothing short of adoring.

"...You know, I would've wanted to make a big deal out of it," Eve muttered, sounding mildly peeved but not really angry, not one bit. Dana chuckled.

"You can still do that, if you want. You know I'll be surprised."

Eve did know; she knew Dana Parrish like the - no, better, much better than the back of her hand.

"But sometimes... I mean. We're in another galaxy," and this time, she meant it differently. "Anything could happen."

Eve swallowed.

"So, um, if it's all right, I'd really like to know," Dana pressed on. "If you'd - if that's something that you'd. Want. With me? If it were," but she didn't have to say 'possible', she didn't get a chance to, because Eve was cutting her off with a short, solid kiss.

"Dana Parrish," Eve said, voice hoarse. "I came to another galaxy and I've seen things most human beings can't even contemplate - but I still think, no, I _know._ " Her hands came up, cupped Dana's cheeks, rubbed slow circles into their long, soft lines with thumbs dulled by gun calluses. "I know. That you are the most incredible thing I've found."

She licked her lips, quick and nervous, and Eve could feel her heart thumping like a rabbit through all the places their skin touched.

"And if it were possible - _when_ it's possible," because Eve _had_ seen some pretty incredible things out here, and she thought, no, she _knew_ \- everything would, someday, become possible. Everything in the universe, anything anyone had ever wished for. Someday, it would come to pass. "I would be... honored. If you would stand at my side, and be my wife."

Dana made a little unattractive shrieky noise, that Eve nevertheless found both very attractive and very endearing, and she threw herself further up the bed to kiss Eve like her life depended on it. It didn't, not in the literal sense - but in a way it did, because a life without love, that wasn't really life at all. And the Atlanteans, they were survivors. They were going to hold on, they were going to make it work, they were going to have this, and all the rest, and everything forever. It was going to be _okay_.

Later, when Eve stopped in her locker, she found a bouquet of flowers - all of them a bright, shocking blue, the color of the summer sky, of Dana's eyes, of the sunlight glancing off the sea. Eve hid a smile and touched the wet cloth that wrapped the base, knowing that Dana would have sent the roots as well, that she would never take a plant without finding a way to keep it. And when she took a puddlejumper over to the mainland, to the Athosian settlement, she wasn't surprised at all to see her girl, her - her fiancée, wrapped in Athosian silks and up to her elbows in dirt.

But she didn't go to her, not yet. First, she turned to the lovely young man who tended the shop while his mother made poultices, cared for the herbs, who had her silvery head bent over with Dana as they talked of soil and sun. "Can you tell me what these mean?" she asked, and showed him a picture she'd snapped on her phone, of the bouquet in its new home - a vase on the windowsill, in the quarters they shared.

The young man looked up at her with a delighted smile. "Congratulations, Miss Lorne," he said, dipping into a quick bow. "Ah, if you have received these, it means - it is the response to a proposal of bonding, of becoming joined at the soul and body, of - "

"Yes, I know what that, yes," Eve muttered, feeling her pale cheeks flush. "But the response..."

The man just chuckled at her embarrassment. "It means yes, Miss. Yes, gladly, as many times as you ask. It is not just yes, but yes and yes and yes and yes, until forever. There is no better sign to receive."

And he kept talking, but Eve didn't hear - she'd looked over, and Dana had looked up, and she thought that, even if they weren't engaged in the eyes of the American government - well, it didn't matter all that much. They were in another galaxy, after all. They didn't have roses or jonquils or beds of clover, but they did have this: blue flowers that meant _yes, gladly_ , and _yes and yes and yes and yes and yes_.


End file.
